Cryptolocker malware adds a $2000 late payment option

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a pile of bitcions

The Cryptolocker malware has evolved once again. Now its creators are offering a way for victims who decided not to pay up within the initial ransom period to get their files back. What started out as a 2-Bitcoin fee balloons to 10 Bitcoins after the 72-hour window has closed.

At current market value, that’s a jump of more than $1,600. Outrageous? Sure, but then again it’s not all that different than the stiff late payment fees legitimate businesses charge us.

Cryptolocker’s controllers obviously want you to know (in a Hollywood Mafia movie kind of way) that they’re human, too, and that they understand that you might regret your decision to not pay up. They know that security experts and law enforcement officials are telling victims not to comply with a ransomer’s requests.

But they also know that regret is a powerful, powerful thing and that it may take a while for you to fully appreciate the extent of the Cryptolocker attack on your system. You might initially think it’s a kind of a bummer that the malware has made it so you’ll never see some of your favorite files again. A couple weeks later, however, and you might be kicking yourself when you realize just how much data you’ve lost.

It’s that non-buyer’s remorse that Cryptolocker now wants to capitalize on. And while the $2,000-plus late payment fee is hardly good news, there is one positive takeaway here: if Cryptolocker will now let victims upload a file after the 72-hour “bargain price” window and use that file (along with a ton of cash) to retrieve a private key, that means there’s a chance that security experts might be able to to do the same one day.

Trouble is, they’ve got to track Cryptolocker back to its source and take over its command and control infrastructure… and they’ve got to do it stealthily, or else it’s highly probably that the criminal minds behind the malware will nuke the backend programming that makes recovery possible.